SuperREUSE: Civic
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SuperREUSE imagines design as an act of renewal within a world of exhaustion. In place of production, it turns toward transformation – the slow re-designation of all that already exists.
The built environment is no longer a static inheritance but a living archive, rewritten through acts of appropriation and care. Depredation becomes mediation; ruin becomes resource. Through these gestures, SuperREUSE proposes an emergent practice grounded in continuity – where the future of design is not built anew, but continually remade from the remnants of what remains.
2025/26: Civic
The Civic Project asks students to define a new civic condition through the adaptive reuse of an existing structure.
The term civic derives from civilis – meaning of the citizen – and refers to the shared systems, spaces, and structures that allow people to live collectively. Students are invited to explore how architecture and the interior can contribute to civic life by working directly with what already exists.
Each student selects one of three contexts:
- Canary Wharf – reimagining corporate architecture as public infrastructure
- Bottle Factory – transforming industrial heritage into civic space
- Free Site – identifying and redesignating a found building of personal or social significance.
Projects begin with close analysis of site, material, and use – understanding the social and spatial histories embedded in the existing fabric.
Through acts of adaptation, subtraction, and transformation, students propose new forms of civic inhabitation that respond to contemporary needs.
The Civic Project situates reuse as both an environmental and social responsibility. It asks how design can redefine public value through what has already been made – how architecture and interiors might become agents of civic renewal rather than instruments of replacement.
References
- Sennett, R. (2018). Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City. London: Allen Lane.
- Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Awan, N., Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2011). Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture. London: Routledge
- Hatherley, O. (2010). A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain. London: Verso.
- Cruz, T., & Forman, F. (2019). Public Imagination: Making the Case for Civic Agency in Architecture. Places Journal.
SuperREUSE philosophy
superREUSE proposes reuse as a critical design methodology for a finite world.
It replaces the pursuit of novelty with the re-designation of the existing. Depredation becomes research; transformation becomes design.
The platform teaches through direct engagement with found material, structure, and space.
Reuse is not preservation but a civic act – an ethical and imaginative response to the conditions we inherit, redefining architecture and the interior as instruments of collective renewal.
